The invention disclosed herein relates to a sign and particularly to an automatically changeable sign in which a plurality of information bearing panels rotate intermittently in unison to compose different scenes that may be pictorial, artistic or informational.
Illuminated displays or signs which exhibit pictorial information, graphics, written descriptions and the like wherein when several sets of panels each containing a portion of a different scene are rotated to a coplanar position, an intelligible scene is composed for being visualized. Signs having these general characteristics have been proposed wherein portions of any of the scenes appear on corresponding sides of elongated triangular assemblies which rotate in unison on a vertical axis and stop in coplanar position A sign of this general type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,616. This patent discloses display units in which portions of a scene are formed on a plurality of rotatable triangularly arranged transparency panels, each of which units contains an elongated centrally located light source to provide for visualizing the scene. The patent does not disclose all of the structural details for making an operative sign but it does reveal some of the problems which the sign disclosed herein has solved. One problem to be solved is that of avoiding leakage of light along the lines where the edges of the panels of the display units meet when members of a single scene arrive in coplanar position. This problem can be avoided by constructing the sign in such a way that tolerances can be kept very low as in the case of the present invention so the joints between adjacent panels of the display units are hardly visible. The solution proposed in the cited patent is one that attempts to compensate for rather than eliminate light leakage gaps between the edges of the panels by closing the gaps with flaps that overlay each other and are mounted to the edges of the individual triangular display units. Such gaps may not be too distracting if only alpha numeric information or scenes are being presented in sequence but they spoil the aesthetic quality of artistic pictorial scenes.